By Steve Brawner, © 2019 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Supporters of the legislatively referred constitutional amendment that’s most likely to pass in 2020 might want to think about how they’ll distance their proposal from the two that probably won’t.

The one that’s most likely to pass would indefinitely extend a half-cent sales tax for highways. Voters first passed the tax with 58 percent support in 2012 to fund the Connecting Arkansas Program, but it’s due to expire in 2023. Pre-legislative session polling by supporters found an extension had similar support. Gov. Asa Hutchinson made fixing roads a priority this session. The state’s most powerful business groups were big supporters. Lawmakers were hearing from constituents who want the potholes filled.

In response, legislators placed the extension on the 2020 ballot – one of three proposals the Constitution allows them to make.

One problem for highway supporters could be the other two.

One would change the state’s legislative term limits, currently 16 years cumulative for most lawmakers. If it passes, they would leave office after 12 years but could run again after sitting out four years.

I think it’s a good idea. It would allow Arkansans to return legislators to office if they want. But it would remove, or at least reduce, the advantages of incumbency, one of our representative democracy’s Achilles’ heels. According to the sponsor, Sen. Alan Clark, R-Lonsdale, few lawmakers return to office in states that have this arrangement. But at least it’s possible.

But the group Arkansas Term Limits is against it. It’s been working on its own proposal to reduce term limits to 10 years, period. Regardless, it will argue that lawmakers want to be legislators for life. Those words will resonate with a lot of voters.

Voters have surprised me often in recent years, but I’m confident in calling this a long shot. But if the third proposal passes, I’ll be almost shocked.

That proposal would make it harder for citizens to amend the Arkansas Constitution by increasing the number of counties where a qualifying number of signatures must be collected, removing the “cure period” when invalid signatures can be replaced, and moving up the deadline for submitting proposed amendments to Jan. 15 of an election year, rather than four months before the election.

These would be significant hurdles.

One of the amendment’s sponsors, Sen. Mat Pitsch, R-Fort Smith, argued before legislators that special interests have used the process to benefit themselves. Meanwhile, the Constitution has been amended 20 times in the last seven elections, which is too many. He’s right about both.

But most amendments are initiated by legislators. True, the proposal also would make it harder for them to refer amendments by requiring a three-fifths majority of legislators rather than the current simple majority. And yes, if the provision had already existed, the term limits amendment might not be on the ballot because it only passed the House 51-26.

However, when the Legislature passes something, it’s often by more than three-fifths. Meanwhile, controversial issues sometimes pass by whatever number of votes is required. Fourteen House members didn’t vote on the term limits measure, and nine voted present. Some would have voted yes if their votes were needed.

In other words, we’d still get a lot of legislatively referred amendments, but fewer citizen-initiated ones.

Then on April 24, Pitsch was quoted by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette telling the Farm Bureau that “liberal-type entities” had used the process to legalize casinos and medical marijuana and increase the minimum wage. The last was an initiated act, not a constitutional amendment. Regardless, it passed with 68 percent of the vote.

David Couch, who led the medical marijuana and minimum wage efforts, was quoted saying legislators’ real problem isn’t the process, but the way regular people are voting.

“It is an attempt by the politicians to take power away from the people,” he wrote – which, like “legislators for life,” is an easy message to communicate.

So in 2020, an argument could be made that legislators want regular Arkansans to tax themselves, and at the same time they seek to extend their time in office and keep citizens from proposing amendments.

Again, if I were campaigning for more highway funding, I’d really try to make those separate issues.